Higgs boson pair production and decay at NLO in QCD: the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ final state

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed NLO QCD calculation of Higgs boson pair production in the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ final state at the LHC, highlighting significant corrections and reduced uncertainties crucial for experimental analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first full NLO QCD calculation of both production and decay for the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ channel, including differential distributions and scale uncertainty analysis.

Findings

QCD NLO corrections decrease the LO result by 19%.

Scale uncertainties are reduced by a factor of two.

Differential distributions are significantly affected by NLO corrections.

Abstract

The Higgs boson pair production at the LHC provides a probe to the Higgs boson self-coupling. The higher-order QCD corrections in this process are sizable and must be taken into account in comparison with data. Due to the small cross section, it is necessary to consider at least one of the Higgs bosons decaying to bottom quarks. The QCD corrections to the decay processes would also be important in such cases. We present a full calculation of the total and differential cross sections for the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ final state with next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections. After applying typical kinematic cuts in the final state, we find that QCD NLO corrections in the decay decrease the LO result by $19\%$ and reduce the scale uncertainties by a factor of two. The QCD corrections to the invariant mass $m_{jj\gamma\gamma}$ distribution, the transverse momentum spectra of the leading bottom quark jet and photon are significant and can not be approximated by a constant factor.